June 6, 2011

Is there anyone else in American public life who is treated like Sarah Palin? Here's this historian, forced to say she wasn't wrong — after all the Sarah-haters have mocked her — and he instinctively grasps for a way to knock her down again. If she got something right, it must just have been an accident.

One of the most pernicious and dangerous features of Palin is her clinical refusal to understand reality, to accept error, to acknowledge when the facts she has cited are not actually facts, but delusions. And her vanity and pathologies are so deep she will insist that black is white until her minions actually find a source to prove it.

She's dangerous; she's shrewd; she's an exhibitionist. But she is also, we must keep reminding ourselves, a farce. What worries me about this political leader incapable of telling fantasy apart from fact is that, in a long and deep recession, someone who can lie that readily and manipulate religious and cultural resentment as well as she does is a danger. Not just to America, but to the world.

We must keep reminding ourselves... isn't that the attitude of someone with a clinical refusal to understand reality, to accept error, to acknowledge when the facts cited are not actually facts, but delusions. You have something you want to believe about Sarah Palin, and whatever new information you receive, you reflexively remind yourself that she is a farce. Applying your own standard, at what point would you be a farce?

In another post, Sullivan says "I fear I'm headed to crazy-land." But he's talking about his beard.

119 comments:

I think Sarah looks up obscure facts and uses them to embarrass her opponents. It's a very shrewd PSYOP tactic but unfortunately the Palin haters in the MSM don't have the smarts to be embarrassed. Because the general public still relies on the MSM for the bulk of their information the fact that she knows what she is talking about is lost on the general public.

The Historian is not taking into account when and where Palin made a comment; after a tour of the relevant historical site.

Palin was likely trying to integrate what she had just learned into a quote, and spoke poorly. Her enemies, without knowing the actual events of the night of April 18/19 1775, immediately proceeded to mock her for 'ignorance'.

As for the 'she got lucky' thought; despising Palin has become a shibboleth among partisan Democrats; if you smugly make fun of Palin, you are one of the elect. If you defend her, your membership among the elect becomes suspect. Vilifying her is an act of faith.

Is Sullivan talking about Palin or himself? Because the statements are more applicable to him than her, especially considering his "clinical refusal to understand reality" when it comes to Palin's reproductive powers - what else can explain his obsession with Trig?

Sullivan needs to put down the one-hitter. His Palin paranoia surpasses all other's combined.

These guys like Sullivan just keep letting Palin get them over. You think the best response for Sullivan would be to ignore it. But he can't. I just love watching Palin cause them to keep making fools of themselves. We really do need better elites in this country. The ones we have just suck.

There was a headline the other day about the pro-Palin documentary and how the guy who made it was talking about doing an X-rated version, and showing all those clips and quotes that weren't family friendly. And the article stated as fact that the whole movie was geared toward her faithful followers and wouldn't so much as impact a single "swing" voter.

If the hard-core Palin antagonists are having to constantly remind themselves and each other that she's a farce, perhaps there is a shift happening.

One can't have someone espousing a lifestyle successfully that contradicts one's personal morality, can one? It makes self-validation so iffy. Especially when circumstances - which is what they are - are so difficult as a result of personal choices.

He seeks to destroy that which mars the smooth finish of postmodern morality. It makes the nights too sleepless.

"Here's what Paul Revere did. He warned the Americans that 'the British were coming, the British were coming' and they were going to try to take our arms so we had to make sure that we were protecting ourselves, shoring up all of our ammunitions and firearms so that they couldn't take them - but remember - the British, many soldiers, had already been there for seven years in that area.

Part of Paul Revere's ride, and it wasn't just one ride, he was a courier, he was a messenger, part of his ride was to warn the British that were already there, that, 'Hey, you're not going to succeed. You're not going to take American arms. You're not going to beat our own well-armed persons, individual private militia that we have.'

He did warn the British and in a shout-out, gotcha type of question that was asked of me, I answered candidly - and I know my American history."

In another post, Sullivan says "I fear I'm headed to crazy-land." But he's talking about his beard.

I'll accept that statement in any context. And speaking of Palin being dangerous, while I first noticed Andrew's madness during the Obama campaign, can it not be said it was Palin who destroyed Sullivan's credibility?

The amateur and lightweight at a match who keeps shooting a possible score in standing position is ALWAYS said to have had an accident. her interview with Chris wallace sunday was 35 minutes of accidents strung together that ended with a cute wink as she apologised to the Romney Campaign for being so much more popular when she snaked Mitt's announcement date PR.

I still think, after watching the video a couple of times, that she said "he was warning the British were coming to take the arms." She omitted a "that" before British. That's the way it sounds to me. The furor is weird and I almost wonder if she did it on purpose.

I love the comments at these links: I know she's an idiot, so that couldn't be what she meant.

But just stop for a minute and think. Do you really think that there's a ten-year-old in America who (a) knows who Paul Revere is, and (b) thinks he warned the British and not the colonists? It's the same as the 1773 error - if they'd been a little smarter, they would have realized that they were missing something.

This whole story is so odd. We never get the basic facts, instead we get is a one-minute clip without context.

1) Who was she responding to.2) What was the question3) How many other Q&A's were there during this session?4) What was she saying before and after the clip, did she say anything else about Paul Revere?5) Did she say anything else about American History? Did she get that right?

Weirdly, none of her critics seem interested.

And what other Politician gets these constant irrelevant "gotchas" about US history? And "Slow Joe" and 57-states Obama are so gaffe prone no one cares.

She doesn't have to do anything else the rest of her life. The way she shows up the cultural snobs time and time again is doing more damage to the Lefty "We know what's best for you" rap than all the studied rebuttal and well-researched essays in the world.

‎He warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms, by ringing those bells, and making sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots, you know, that we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free. And we were gonna be armed.

That's my best shot at transcribing the "slip-up" in the clip. It's also pretty clear that the clip starts and ends in mid-conversation, and Sarah explicitly states that she'd recently learned some interesting facts.

Sarah's Excellent Bus Trip has some interesting parallels to Revere's exploits on the night of his ride. The masses have been alerted, and the foot-soldiers of the political class aren't going to be met without opposition any more. Ring the bells.

The eminent Professor in question is explaining the darwinian theory as applied to a lower life form. An accident has intelligently designed this amazing historical event to luckily be what amoeba Sarah said that it was. Does that mean Sarah will survive as the fittest candidate, or instead that she will have to wait another 4 billion years to be right again.

I suppose you could say that is what Palin meant, but the convoluted word choice never makes clear that Revere had been captured and then with a gun to his head lied and exaggerated to good effect. Still it is enough for Palin believers to keep the faith-- it all depends on what you mean by warned!

Puck, I listened to the clip; I transcribed it for those too sure of their opinions to actually listen to it (see above); and what I heard is what Professor McConville heard, factually correct statements.

When McCain chose Palin, the Dems freaked out. The juxtaposition of Palin and Obama didn't bode well for them. She was younger yet had a long enough record of actually accomplishing things that she was even managing a political scandal. Palin's existence was further proof of Obama's inexperience.

When smearing her, they didn't use the scandal. It would have been smear-gold, except that would have further highlighted Obama's inexperience.

Instead, they used her beauty queen history to say Palin's stupid. After all, a woman simply cannot be both attractive and intelligent. That's scientific FACT. (Contrast the Hillary meme, that Hillary's smart/ugly.)

Palin is d-u-m-b, so everything Palin does is discounted as being "dumb". (And it's super easy to make people look dumb on tape, dontcha know.) If there is proof that Palin has said something not unintelligent, it's proof of luck rather than intelligence.

Playground? Totally. They've chosen their terministic screen, and they've been bullying this woman on the playground since day #1.

The man who devoted two years of his life with an unhealthy and irrational obsession with Sarah Palin's uterus?

The man who spent hundreds of man-hours talking and compiling blog posts trying to persuade sane people to believe in his concocted fantasy that Sarah Palin didn't give birth to her youngest son?

That man wants to talk about someone else's delusions? That Andrew Sullivan?

Does it get any juicier?

BTW, there is NEVER a Memeorandum thread mentioning Palin that Sullivan doesn't comment on. The guy's whole world revolves around trying to tear her down. I'm no shrink, and I know we through the term Palin Derangement Syndrome around half jokingly, but I really think it fits Sullivan. His obsession can't be nornal. Palin should get a restraining order against the guy.

If Palin was referring to the fact that Revere verbally warned the British after he was captured, she picked a really garbled way of saying that.

Saying he "warned the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells" means either (a) he rang the bells to warn the British or (b) the British were trying to take away our arms by ringing bells. I am not surprised that people predisposed to disliking Palin are unwilling to give her the benefit of the doubt here.

It IS funny to hear Sullivan rant about people who refuse "acknowledge when the facts [they cite] are not actually facts, but delusions", though.

I'm not sure that I'd call Palin "wrong" on this score as "impossible to follow". What she said sounded "wrong" and certainly was incoherent which made it sound wronger, but for the love of McConville, my understanding is that she was processing something she'd heard on the tour. Unluckily for her.

Sullivan has discussed his own mother being mentally ill, in & out of hospitals while he was growing up. The crazy female is deeply embedded. Then he was very big into Thatcher. The iron lady, stabilizing his wavering anima. Palin is remarkable in that she is conservative without being colorless or sexually repressed. Upsetting his categories.

On April 14, 1775, General Gage received instructions from Secretary of State William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth, to disarm the rebels, who were known to have hidden weapons in Concord, among other locations, and to imprison the rebellion's leaders, especially Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Dartmouth gave Gage considerable discretion in his commands.[9][10] Gage issued orders to Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith to proceed from Boston “with utmost expedition and secrecy to Concord, where you will seize and destroy... all Military stores... But you will take care that the soldiers do not plunder the inhabitants or hurt private property.” Gage did not issue written orders for the arrest of rebel leaders, as he feared doing so might spark an uprising.[11]

Haters are going to hate. Palin's going to be attack-edited at any and every opportunity. But she obviously knew more of the story than her intellectual betters here and elsewhere. Exposing the intellectual dishonesty and/or laziness of her most virulent detractors does everyone a great service, because those are the people who think they should (and often do) call the shots in this country.

If Palin was referring to the fact that Revere verbally warned the British after he was captured, she picked a really garbled way of saying that.

Definately she could have been more clear and if they had criticized that, that would have been fine. But this whole "she's just lucky for getting the story mostly right" is silly. I think she probably had the jist, whether from previous study or from the tour guide, but I don't think she lucked into a vaguely correct answer.

When you put them together in the form "Revere rang bells and fired shots to warn the British that they wouldn't be able to seize the armaments", the result is 100% wrong.

The only question is whether the statement is wrong simply because she garbled the sentence -- as people often do, when speaking extemporaneously -- or because she didn't understand how 1, 2, and 3 fit together. Like I pointed out, people predisposed to dislike her are going to assume she didn't know what the heck she was talking about. People predisposed to like her are going to focus completely on the parts she got right and dismiss the poor wording as nothing more than that.

I have seen many essays and discussions over the years about what kind of people want to be actors or politicians or writers or what have you. The one common thread is that some kind of driving ambition abides. This kind of drive is not wide spread in the general population.

Sullivan is not the first writer to go round the bend. Nor the first politician or the first actor or the first activist. I don't have any research but my experience (68 years) it seems to me this happens at much higher rate than the general population.

I suspect that this driving force, call it what you will, is a marker for people who display unusual behavior.

This accounts for prominent people like the Harvard professor who go loopy.

I think that what is interesting about Sarah Palin here is not that she is technically correct, or that the MSM and the rest of the left thought that they had caught her in a misstatement, but rather, that she sees things that most of the rest of us do not.

As I see it, she had just come out of a historical tour, that included a bunch of trivia about Revere, et al., and what had struck her as being important was that Revere had essentially given the Regulars the finger. Revere was apparently proud of the fact that he had warned the Regulars that the rebel colonists were ready for them, and surprise had been lost.

To some extent, this fits into her "fight's on" statement from a couple of weeks ago. I think that she was recognizing a fellow traveler in Paul Revere, someone willing to openly take the fight to the enemy.

Remember, Revere apparently did this with a gun to his head (in his own words, or, in other stories, to his chest). Of course, there could have been some revisionism on his part (most of us wouldn't have been so brazen in his shoes that night). But, it is a good story, that fits well into the Tea Party and founding era story that she is pushing.

This whole fooferaw is off camber. Palin had just made the tour of an exhibit, and I think, was asked what she had learned or what her reaction was, and she responded on the spot.

She was wrong about it being a purpose of Revere's ride to warn the purpose, which I think I hear her say, but that is minor, and in any case we do not know exactly how the tour guide had phrased it.

Other than that, she was right on when you look up the whole story and think about it, and as Hayden says, it is remarkable how Ms. Sarah immediately picks up on the essentials and can re-state them in terms that make us think again about things.

She was wrong about it being a purpose of Revere's ride to warn the British, which I think I hear her say, but that is minor

She is being accused of incorrectly claiming that the purpose of Revere's ride was to warn the British. So no, it isn't a minor point that (a) she said that and (b) she's wrong. It is, in fact, the one and only relevant point.

Making incoherent statements which are then interpreted by others to reveal fundamental truths is all well and good if you're, say, the Oracle at Delphi. If you're a politician it is a bit of a problem.

No, here's the thing. Sully had a lot of people who respected his turn on the War before Palin and Trig came along. Yes, he broke with Bush over gay marriage, but his turn on the war was genunine. I watch him agonize over Bush's mishandling of the Occupation in early 2003.

Unfortunately, it was gay marriage that sent him over the wall. But he was a really great writer at one time.

Sarah Palin unlocked some inner Mommy demons in him that he simply could not deal with and maintain any sense of detachment.

The above comments from Revenant and Bruce Hayden strike me as logical conclusions.

While I agree with most of her policy positions, she comes off as a dingbat to me in a number of public appearances like this one. She can win the nomination, but this will be problematic in the general elections IMO.

It does amaze me how much seemingly reasonable people like Revenant and Seven Machos dislike Palin so much. Or maybe not dislike her but dislike the "idea" of her that excites the hoi polloi that need the benefit of thier guidance to turn to the magnificent stylings of Tim Pawlenty or Mitch Daniels or the Peter Potoumus or some new Rhino here at Adventure Park.

But then Rev doesn't much care for the sweet little baby Jesus so there you go.

I think it's the Palin has the same weaknesses as Obama. A lot of charisma but not much experience. These are tough times, and the U.S. needs someone who can push some tough things through. Not a savior, but someone who can get stuff done. Overall, we've had bad leadership from the president and Congress the last 10 years. The House Republicans are finally making some sense. A lot of them were the same guys who went along with big government compassionate conservatism, and look where that got us.

Anyway, Pawlenty (and Daniels) showed some fiscal conservatism in restraining spending in their states. Anyone who can hold the line on spending (or better yet cut it) and push policies that promote economic growth deserves to be President.

"I think it's the Palin has the same weaknesses as Obama. A lot of charisma but not much experience."

True enough, I think. But Obama has other weaknesses than a lack of experience. A lack of... context and understanding. And his particular area of lacking experience is the point at which the rubber meets the road. We were supposed to believe he had "executive experience" on account of him running his *campaign*. People said that, without choking and falling over dead.

"These are tough times, and the U.S. needs someone who can push some tough things through. Not a savior, but someone who can get stuff done."

For which we need drive and charisma. Not sober statesmanship and cerebral enunciations.

"Overall, we've had bad leadership from the president and Congress the last 10 years. The House Republicans are finally making some sense. A lot of them were the same guys who went along with big government compassionate conservatism, and look where that got us."

And who is holding their feet to the fire? Not Palin *only*, but I'd like to know who you think could do a better job at holding their feet to the fire?

Here you have a team that spends all it's money and does everything it can to win, spare no expense. But you can't root for a winner. You have to stick with your losers like the Mets or the Cubs or you just imitate the Yankees like the Red Sucks or the Phillies.

It does amaze me how much seemingly reasonable people like Revenant and Seven Machos dislike Palin so much.

I don't dislike her, except inasmuch as I dislike politicians in general.

I think she's an ordinary mainstream Republican politician who for some reason inspires mindless rage from a large number of Democrats and mindless praise from a smaller but still large number of Republicans. Members of the latter group, e.g. you, assume I hate her because I realize the American people overwhelmingly dislike her and react to that fact by saying "so let's not run her for President because four more years of Obama will suck" instead of saying "if we run her for President and wish really hard somehow she will win and everything will be awesome".

It is indeed minor in the context of what happened, either the night of 18 April 1775 or the other day on Palin's bus trip.

She only said, or implied, that it was a purpose, not that it was the purpose.

For myself, I have just re-read a couple of chapters of Page Smith's description of the events, which are quite detailed, and I would say that Ms. Sarah's remarks quite well caught the spirit of the times back then.

If she does not speak in the measured tones of history professor in a Ferris Bueller movie, and you think she should, that is too bad. She certainly speaks to the rest of us!

And who is holding their feet to the fire? Not Palin *only*, but I'd like to know who you think could do a better job at holding their feet to the fire?

Um, Palin was one of "them". She signed up for McCain's big-government "conservative" agenda in the 2008 race, and her opposition to federal largesse in Alaska was inconsistent. The Tea Party movement started, in large part, in response to the very same bailout that she and McCain had supported. She hopped on that bandwagon after it was well underway and, more importantly, after she was out of office.

So yeah, she's talking the right ideological talk now that she's making a living giving speeches to the base. But when she was actually in a position to do some good she didn't do a damned thing to hold anyone's feet to the fire on runaway government growth -- she was one of the people to whose feet the fire needed to be held.

Which is why I am mystified when people talk about how totally serious she is on these issues. Of the currently declared candidates (Romney, Paul, Pawlenty, Johnson, Gingrich, Santorum, and Cain) the only ones with worse small-government track records than her are Romney and, arguably, Santorum. That still makes her miles better than anyone who might plausibly run as a Democrat -- but, well, what current candidate isn't?

Roesch: "the convoluted word choice never makes clear that Revere had been captured and then with a gun to his head lied and exaggerated to good effect."

Your unreasoned, knee-jerk opinion of Palin continues to blind you to the obvious: It doesn't matter if Revere was captured or not. What she said is still true. His ride sparked his countrymen to ring bells and fire warning shots that WARNED THE BRITISH THEY WERE IN FOR A FIGHT, and were not going to be disarmed.

Sheese man, take of the hate soaked blinders. It's right there in front of you. Plain, clear, simple and obvious. Do you need it to come from your grade school teacher or a poem to understand it?

I think she's an ordinary mainstream Republican politician who for some reason inspires mindless rage from a large number of Democrats and mindless praise from a smaller but still large number of Republicans.

Speaking for at least one of the later group, the thing that is so refreshing about her is that she refuses to give legitimacy to the positions of the left, as well as the MSM. And, she is not hesitant in taking controversial stands. I esp. liked that she said to get rid of all energy subsidies. That took the equivalent of balls, given that Iowa is the first state to select delegates, and no self respecting person would ever question the political correctness of green energy subsidies. Except that we can't afford any of that right now. We used to say that we were borrowing from the ChiComs for this, but they dumped most of their debt of ours this last week, so I don't know who is stuck with our debt. In any case, we can't afford to borrow this money to give away to farmers in Iowa, GE with its windmills and solar panels, GM with its Volt, or those oil companies and their depletion allowances.

Contrast that with, say, Romney, who flip-flops from backing ethanol subsidies when in Iowa, opposing them when he leaves, and appears to believe in AGW.

The other thing about Palin is that she and her family are so normal. We watched a Congressman blow up this week, after sending questionable pictures to various young women around the country, soon after having married a very beautiful woman.

Finally, she is the anti-elitist. Our betters got us into this mess, with all their fancy degrees from top universities. They are so smart, that they have flushed some 4 Trillion dollars or so down the drain, while inflating our money supply, all because they never thought through the question of why Keynesian economics would conceivably work. Looking back, it is plain silly to think that taking money from the productive sector to fund more and better paying government jobs would get us out of the recession, or that passing ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank (the two guys most responsible for the property mess in the first place) might not hurt the recovery.

Palin is the anti-elitist who points out that them there smarty pants intellectuals have had 3 or so years now, and all that they have done is deepen the recession and give their best friends a lot of that money that they stole from the rest of us. Somewhat like a Jackson.

The left hates her for a number of reasons. One is that she punctures their pretensions. Another is that their power, to a great extent, is based on their pretense of protecting the little guys in our society. Which is fine, but it ultimately means that those who work hard, but don't earn that much more than the freeloaders in our society, have to pay for this pretense. And, that is unlikely to be good for the Democrats' power base.

""if we run her for President and wish really hard somehow she will win and everything will be awesome"."

I think she could win. As I understand it (based on my reading the tubes and listening to the radio) cons think that BHO is an evil-commie-genious/incompetent-weak-America-hater. Presumably you can cobble together a majority of voters who would choose Palin over that.

And, I really liked her TV show. The one in Alaska. [Though I did miss the last few shows because I forgot about it, I guess I wasn't all that dedicated.]

Anyway, she seems like a nice gal. Not extremely smart, but well above average. She's developed and implemented an effective dough rustling plan. And, she's still finding time for a family bus/motorcycle trip. What's not to like?

[Full disclosure: I'd never vote for her, but that's because I'm in the tank on the other side. Even so, if I had to cross over, I'd definitely take her over Mr Plastic.]

Now that we've established that Paul Revere really did warn a British officer that the entire countryside was aroused against His Majesty's troops, I have to admit that my take on what Paul Revere wrote is a bit different from Sarah Palin's.

I think that when he was taken prisoner his expectation was that he would be ridden over to a tree with a good, strong, horizontal limb, and left hanging there. It's a guy thing, but I think he was taunting his captors. Remember, the mantra of "name, rank, and serial number" was still many scores of years in the future.

As someone said the other day, if she was never drafted for the VP last election, she would be in a very enviable position today without all the negative press and attacks since then. But even after taking all that fire, she is still envied by the other candidates, and even with all that continuing heat on her. They would love to have her power. It's unprecedented.

I don't have any connection to the R primary voters, so I'm stuck w/ the conventional wisdom.

I think that it'd be refreshing to see the Rs go w/ one of the less canned candidates. [I apologize for using 'refreshing' in this context, the only thing worse would have been 'breath of fresh air.' I think I've seen one too many Luntz focus groups, now I'm talking like them!]

"I think she's an ordinary mainstream Republican politician who for some reason inspires mindless rage from a large number of Democrats and mindless praise from a smaller but still large number of Republicans."

You know absolutely nothing about her. You are just spewing drivel.

A short primer for you knucklehead:

She destroyed the corrupt Republican Party in Alaska. Her approval rating there was over 80% when McCain selected her.

Contrast that with, say, Romney, who flip-flops from backing ethanol subsidies when in Iowa, opposing them when he leaves, and appears to believe in AGW.

She was pro-ethanol-subsidy during the 2008 election. So, yes, she's a flip-flopper on this issue too, just like pretty much every Republican. If you want someone who really DID take that controversial stand during an actual election, I direct your attention to Ron Paul.

If you're looking for a candidate who can't win but who is anti-elitist, willing to take controversial stands, and ideologically consistent then Palin's your fourth-best choice, after Johnson, Paul, and Cain. :)

It is certainly true that Palin challenged the state Republican establishment, and good on her for doing it. But don't oversell it.

In any case I was referring to her political views, not her track record. If you want to talk about her track record then sure, there's some good stuff in it. There's also some bad stuff, e.g. her signing on to big-government conservatism and zillion-dollar bailouts in '08.

I would take her policy statements in 2008 with a grain of salt. The VP candidate, as policy, echos the POTUS candidate's polices (McCain). She's no longer under the McCain campaign and can advance her own policies.

Huskers, I'll grant you that the VP candidate is expected to echo the positions of the Presidential candidate.

But while "she advocated the opposite of what she believed because that's what the party leadership expected of her" is a perfectly plausible and ordinary explanation for her behavior, it doesn't exactly fit with the meme that we can trust her to stand up to the complacent party establishment and hold peoples' feet to the fire on government spending. "She just did what was expected of her" is not the battle cry of a maverick politician. :)

I'm tired of the group-think political class that springs from the elite east coast universities. That has contributed to a number of the problems we face today. Thus I would consider it a plus if a candidate came from a small school outside of the politically correct ones.

Yet I can also distinguish Palin's academic career as something I'm not enamored with either. A reported six schools in six years to obtain a journalism degree speaks to me of a person that is not focused and disciplined. Not a bad person. Just not someone that I can identify with.

Add in leaving the Governor's position in Alaska after only two years and you have this traditional conservative scratching his head about the values of focus, loyalty and seeing things through.

I can understand the desire to support someone with true conservative positions. I can also appreciate the concept of populating the White House with someone from Eureka College rather than Harvard or Yale. But I can't then lower my standards and immediately pledge support of Palin simply because I can "check" those two boxes.

1. Lisa Murkowski's election was the result of the on-going war in the Alaska Republican Party between the old boys and the new.

2. The Justice Department Attorneys who pursued the case against Stevens were reprimanded for prosecutorial misconduct.

You have demonstrated an intellectual dishonesty that is astounding.

"In any case I was referring to her political views, not her track record. If you want to talk about her track record then sure, there's some good stuff in it. There's also some bad stuff, e.g. her signing on to big-government conservatism and zillion-dollar bailouts in '08."

Do you not see it? You admit you do not like her for ideological reasons but then try to assert your positions based on supposed facts that have been refuted each and every time?

This is the classical logical fallacy of "false proposition".

Please, brush up on your logic. When you can coherently answer me I will be more than pleased to continue this convrsation.

Palin jacked up spending 31 percent in her two years as governor. She increased taxes on oil companies so she could pay Alaskans more money for just living there. This is not the stuff of fiscal conservatism. She needs to atone for this big government record before I take her seriously.

Palin is handicapped by expectations. Anything she says is considered by definition to be wrong. If she turns out to be right, it was an accident. Obama, otoh is the exact opposite. Palin cant talk off the top of her head without being incoherent. Unlike the occasionally sober Ted Kennedy. Or the rambling Joe Biden. Or President Obama without a Teleprompter. But which one gets the press? Perhaps if there was way to revise and extend her remarks and edit out the uhs and clarify what she said. Like Congress does. If you disagree with her politically, then argue that. But to ridicule her speaking style which is no different than many on the other side of the political divide, is just lazy.

I "incited" you? I wasn't even talking to you. I don't even know who the hell you are; you must be new here. Anyway, don't blame me (or alcohol) for your decision to act like an ignorant prick. Show some of the personal responsibility conservatives claim to believe in.

Lisa Murkowski's election was the result [blah blah blah]

My point was that you can't say that the corrupt Alaska Republicans have were "destroyed" by Palin when the two senators are (a) a corrupt Republican and (b) the Democrat who replaced a corrupt Republican ally of Palin.

The Justice Department Attorneys who pursued the case against Stevens were reprimanded for prosecutorial misconduct.

There are two possibilities here. One is that you're trying to deny Stevens was corrupt, and the other is that you're trying to change the subject. In the first case you're delusional, and in the latter case you're wasting my valuable time. Stevens was one of the most corrupt people in the entire Senate, and that's really saying something.

Moving on now.

You admit you do not like her for ideological reasons but then try to assert your positions based on supposed facts that have been refuted each and every time?

Where and when did I "admit" that I "do not like her for ideological reasons"? I simply pointed out that she has not been a reliable advocate for the things her fan club claims to care about.

You dont think the oil companies should pay Alaska for the oil they pump out of the ground?

Oil companies pay a negotiated royalty to the government of Alaska in exchange for the oil.

What mccullough is referring to is the new tax on oil company profits enacted by the Alaskan legislature and signed by Palin. That was a pure taking -- "wealth redistribution", as mccullough noted.

The simple truth of the matter is that one side had the money and the other side had the votes, so the side with the votes voted itself the money. You can justify that all sorts of ways, but you sure can't call it economic conservatism.

It was exactly the sort of thing that gives conservatives fits when Democrats propose it -- in fact, Democrats DID propose it just last year, and it gave conservatives fits. :)

(Bill) O’Reilly: "Now I’m going to stick up for the Governor because I know something about Paul Revere, I actually have his signature. He DID tell the British, you better knock it off, you better not try to seize the guns, because if you do there is going to be a big problem which off course ensued. So we’ll give her the benefit of the doubt as we try to do with everybody, Bernie."